As Brexit muddles along, Trump roots for full break from Europe

WASHINGTON - As Britain's divorce from the European Union stumbles ahead, hardliners pushing for a full break are finding support in one foreign capital - Washington.

Prime Minister Theresa May, who is barely holding on to power at home, found a frosty reception on her latest mission to Brussels as she struggles to sell Brexit on her terms.

Nor is she finding much support from US President Donald Trump, who has openly questioned her Brexit deal, instead favoring a full break.

Right-wing critics fear the current deal could leave Britain indefinitely in the EU customs union so as to prevent restoration of the border between Ireland and Northern Ireland.

Trump, speaking to reporters soon after May announced her Brexit package, dismissed it as "a great deal for the EU".

He suggested that the agreement could hold back a trade deal between the United States and Britain - which conservatives in both countries have dangled as an incentive if Britain leaves the EU.

"That would be a very big negative for the deal," Trump said.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has also embraced Brexit since he took over from the less ideological Rex Tillerson.

In a recent Fox News interview, Pompeo promised to pursue the vaunted US-Britain "special relationship" in the increasingly likely scenario of a "hard Brexit" without a negotiated deal.

Trump's enthusiasm for Brexit stands in marked contrast to the views of his predecessor Barack Obama, who had warned that Britain would be at the "back of the queue" for a US trade deal if it left the EU.

Nile Gardiner, an aide to former prime minister Margaret Thatcher now at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative US think tank, said Brexit was a natural philosophical fit for Trump. The US president has championed an "America First" policy suspicious of multinational institutions.

Gardiner said that Brexit would also have a practical benefit for Trump in pulling Britain out of a common EU foreign policy.

"Britain has been very heavily EU-focused for the last few decades," Gardiner said. "I would envisage a British foreign policy that is much more closely aligned with the US."

Meanwhile, Britain's exit from the EU was heading for an impasse, a senior minister said on Saturday.

"Brexit is in danger of getting stuck - and that is something that should worry us all," pensions minister Amber Rudd wrote in Saturday's Daily Mail newspaper.

"If MPs (lawmakers) dig in against the prime minister's deal and then hunker down in their different corners, none with a majority, the country will face serious trouble."

AFP - Reuters

(China Daily 12/17/2018 page12)